May 2009 - Dinner Party

Last night we had our first dinner party for 2009 which was a 70's theme. We found a fantastic Bessemer plastic dinner set when we went to Daylesford about 5 weeks ago. It was a full set for 8 (bar one side dish) and we managed to find an excellent tablecloth and an outfit for Mark at the Lost & Found Market http://www.threethousand.com.au/shop/the-new-lost-and-found-market/















Both of our mothers contributed a number of items including the old teaspoons from around the world, a globe shaped ice bucket and pearlescent ice pincer, some georgeous Bendigo pottery wine glasses and inspiration for some massive salad servers which acted as a central decoration piece.

The menu consisted of everything 70's. Mark spoke to some work colleagues and one of them found about 4 original 70's cookbooks and brought them in. We sourced some 'top quality' recipes and tried each of them for the first time last night!

After 3 trips to Safeway in the same day to find obscure items like cocktail onions and gelatin, we eventually got everything together and most of it was a success (taste wise).

I'm also very pleased that everyone dressed up - Pete and Marie were in classic 70's casual gear, Tyson was in his social realism (Al Pacino) look, Marni was dressed for Melbourne Cup 1975 and Helen was in a fabulous mini skirt with her mother's original lace up black boots, whilst Iain had bright green hipster polyester pants and a groovy paisley shirt.

We started with Riccadonna sparkling and Spumante. We then moved onto Chianti, Coolabah white cooler and eventually onto a couple of nice red wines (our modern day outcast). The menu included celery boats with philly cream cheese, cheddar cheese and cocktail onions with Ritz crackers & vol au vents with either creamed corn or tuna mornay.





























For mains we had cold chicken mousse in my mother's ripple edged cake tin, beef stroganoff with rice, cheese paprika cauliflower and carrot salad.



































Afterwards we had baked apples with raisins, soaked in sugar syrup and vanilla ice-cream along with a sweet Muscatel.

Finally we had tea and Lindt chocolates before the night wrapped up.